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Our Wild Lives
Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.
Our Wild Lives
How Colorado Brought Wolves Back
How does a voter mandate become a wolf reintroduction program?
In this episode, Katie and Ed sat down with Brenna Cassidy and Eric Odell of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to unpack the Colorado gray wolf (Canis lupus) reintroduction program.
The conversation explores ecological and behavioral questions surrounding gray wolf reintroduction. Can wolves trigger trophic cascades and change rivers? How are ungulate populations, such as elk (Cervus canadensis) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), altering their behavior? Are predator dynamics shifting as wolves reestablish their range?
Odell and Cassidy share their tips for navigating contentious topics with stakeholders, and they reveal what CPW is doing to mitigate wolf conflict.
The conversation also gives wisdom for aspiring biologists: say yes to varied work, build long‑term relationships, and listen first.
Learn more:
Colorado Parks and Wildlife: https://cpw.state.co.us/
Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan: https://cpw.widencollective.com/assets/share/asset/wixcpz0wez
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So wolves are back in Colorado, but the story isn't so simple. In this episode of Our Wild Lives, we sit down with Dr. Brennan Cassidy, Wolf Monitoring and Data Coordinator, and Eric Odell, Wolf Conservation Program Manager at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department. Together, they unpack the complex journey of wolf reintroduction in Colorado, from historical extirpation to today's restoration efforts. We talk about the role of public opinion and legislation in shaping wildlife policy and dive into the realities of wolf livestock conflicts, management strategies, and the values and science that guide it all. You'll also hear behind the scenes stories from the field and some of the key things to do when navigating conflict and conservation.
SPEAKER_02:And I met Arnett, a co-host of the Our Wild Lives Podcast. It's great to have you guys and really look forward to our conversation.
SPEAKER_01:Can you give us a brief overview of wolves in Colorado?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so the story of wolves in Colorado is certainly a long one and an interesting one for sure. But to put it kind of briefly, historically wolves were everywhere in Colorado. They covered east to west, north to south. Every county had wolves historically. And through all of the predator control work that was done in the early 1900s, the wolves were ultimately extirpated. No more wolves were in the state. The last time we had wolves was in the 1940s or so. There was reintroductions that happened outside of the state in Yellowstone in central Idaho in the mid-90s. And Colorado maintained no wolf populations, no known wolves quite a while until those populations in the northern Rockies really started to kind of take off, do well there. And so after those reintroductions in the 1990s, we started to see individual wolves coming down into the state from time to time. None of them lasted very long in the state. Some of them were monitored, collared, and some were not. Some we found out about only because they were hit on roads and killed on I-70, right? So all of these things were happening in the larger lower 48 parts of the country. And so at that time, wolves were managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They're federally listed. And so there were these things called the distinct population segments, these different geographic areas where wolves were managed. And each DPS distinct population segment was managed differently. In Colorado, I-70 is the major interstate east-west. And to the north of I-70 was one DPS, and to the south was another DPS. And so there was some ex expectation that there might be a delisting of wolves in that northern DPS. And so at that time, we the Colorado Division of Wildlife at the time convened a working group that was going to describe how wolves would be managed in the state as they migrated into the state. There was no reintroduction discussion about it. But it's, you know, when if wolves are delisted and management authority then comes back to the state, how does this how are we going to deal with this as wolves naturally continue this migration and ultimately potential establishment in the state? And so this group put these recommendations together for how wolves will be managed. That was finalized, approved in 2004. We never really had a population of wolves become established in the state. And then the the whole DPS issue became a non-issue and wolves were then listed throughout the country, with the exception of Mexican wolves and red wolves. That doesn't really pertain to Colorado. So all of this time is going on, and there's these ways that wolves could be managed. And we're seeing some natural migration, but not a whole lot of it. So then a group put together a petition in beginning in 2019, starting to collect signatures. In Colorado, you can do that. You can collect signatures on a petition to get an issue put on the statewide ballot. And so that started the summer of 2019. That was not a Colorado Parks and Wildlife led effort. It was outside, that was citizen-driven. And ultimately they got enough signatures on their petitions to put it on the ballot in November of 2020. And it passed. And that created state law. And that really directed our whole efforts from that point forward to develop a wolf plan to develop protocols for how we're going to reintroduce wolves, how we're going to manage wolves, how we're going to compensate for livestock losses and things like that. So there's a long story to it. That's kind of the nutshell of how we got to where we are.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting. Colorado having lived in Oregon, you were taking a similar path of Oregon. Colorado was and develop in planning for their immigration into the state, basically. But then the proposition for 114 came along. So how did the public opinion influence that? I mean, it seems to me like the public was being informed on wolf reintroduction. They were being formed on ecological benefits. Parks and wildlife really couldn't lobby against it, right? There were a number of NGOs that were against this, of course, in the ranching community and others, but that public opinion was swayed a little bit in favor of the reintroduction, of course.
SPEAKER_03:It was a really interesting time because as a state agency, when there is an issue on a statewide ballot, we're just simply prohibited from taking positions. And so CPW, Collar Parks and Wildlife, really didn't, we certainly didn't take a position on the proposition. It was 114, or really put do much in advocating one way or the other for or against wolf reintroduction. We just simply couldn't say much about that just based on state law. And so a lot of that was with the way public opinion was formed on that was the general advertising. And there was a lot of advertising both sides for and against wolf reintroduction. We saw billboards all around the state on highways, you know, with all kinds of imagery that you might imagine if either wolves are great or wolves are terrible. And so that the, you know, I think that that's one of the key takeaways from wolf management. And as a wildlife agents, we do all kinds of restoration of all different kinds of species. For wolves, it's not that different biologically from all the other aspects that we've done links reintroduction, black-footed ferrets, all these other things. But socially and politically, it's a totally different issue. And so that public opinion drives a lot of in the way wolf restoration happened and now how wolf management's happening.
SPEAKER_02:There's like a social carrying capacity relative to the habitat carrying capacity. We as biologists all know what habitat carrying capacity looks like, but that social carrying capacity is really critical in all of this because there is a threshold that is well below the habitat carrying capacity in terms of how many wolves will be socially accepted in the state.
SPEAKER_03:I think, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, Colorado is perfectly suited in a lot of ways for wolves. We've got huge ungulate populations, we've got lots of public lands, we've got lots of good areas from a very general biological perspective of what makes good wolf habitat, habitat generalists. So there's nothing particularly specific that they need. But you're right, the social carrying capacity is very much lower than whatever they could maintain as a biologically self-regulating.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that public opinion drove the proposition 114, but it's also driving some current things that are happening now legislatively and such. So that it's starting to play out live here in Colorado on that social acceptance.
SPEAKER_00:So during that whole time, too, I was not with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. I'm fairly new to the agency, but watching from a distance and watching, you know, the summer leading up to that vote, having a couple of these wolves that naturally immigrated into Colorado who bred and had pups. I was viewing it from a far distance. I was sitting in Montana watching with fascination this whole entire thing play out. And there seemed to be like, here's this little taste of what it's like living with wolves in one small area, one group of wolves. I'm continually fascinated how that entire situation played out with these naturally immigrating wolves breeding, while also this ballot initiative was gaining signatures and actually getting on the ballot just a couple months later. What kind of cosmic alignment was that that all happened at the same time?
SPEAKER_02:Especially given the politics in the neighboring state and the management strategies there. If they step across the border, they're in serious jeopardy. Yeah. And protected on this side of Colorado.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Brennan, I think this is a great one for you because you were telling us how you've worked with a few different distinct populations of wolves. So what makes the Colorado wolf reintroduction different from previous efforts in other places?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So there's a couple things that we can kind of point to right away that we've identified already. You know, this was spurred by Proposition 114 and was a vote, and there's plenty of public opinion there in previous translocation efforts in the lower 48 at least, that was not led by a vote, that was led by a federal agency or a state agency. So there's some major differences there. Colorado is, you know, we're looking at a statewide perspective. And when we look at something like Yellowstone, that was, you know, a much tighter area and it was a national park. Uh so the goals and the mission statements of the National Park Service and a state agency are fairly different. So looking at the two different perspectives there, I think is really interesting. On more of a biological level, one thing that I've noticed living in Colorado just for a year and a half or so, coming from some history in Yellowstone in particular, is Colorado is a dramatic landscape. I mean, there are deserts, high alpine peaks, like there are so many different ecotypes in this state that I'm absolutely fascinated watching wolves move around and go places that I not necessarily am completely surprised by, but it's pretty incredible. I mean, wolves above 13,000 feet, wolves moving through desert that I, you know, didn't necessarily think was amazing wolf habitat. And coming from somewhere like Yellowstone, which is a little bit less dramatic, it's pretty fascinating looking at a couple of those, those kind of biological differences. And also, we're just a little bit further away from these bigger populations that in the 80s and and into the early 90s before wolf reintroduction in central Idaho and Yellowstone, wolves were recolonizing northwestern Montana. And there was a huge debate of whether wolf reintroduction in in those areas was necessary or not. You know, ultimately it happened, but those populations are all connected now. And when we look at Colorado, we're looking at the future and thinking, oh, are we going to be connected or not? And thinking about those considerations for our founding population to make sure we have a big enough and diverse enough founding population.
SPEAKER_01:And talking about watching where these wolves are going, is that part of your work? You've got callers on them and you're reading through all this data of where they're going. Can you tell us about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah. So I am the monitoring coordinator and data coordinator. So collecting all that data, watching where are wolves going, are they forming packs? You know, which ones are surviving, which ones are dying, which ones are pairing and reproducing. So, you know, it's a pretty exciting time. We're in early summer of 2025 and we're starting to get pup counts on the four dens that we're monitoring. We also have had several mortalities this spring, but you know, as we know, those two things are what balances a population, including immigration and emigration as well. We just don't see as much of that in Colorado as, you know, because we're not closely connected to another wolf population. Right.
SPEAKER_02:You know, the literature's kind of played up a good bit of the science behind ecological benefits of having wolf populations, Yellowstone being the ultimate science playground for that. My understanding is some of that's maybe a little misleading or can be misleading. And maybe you could talk a little bit about what the expected benefits are. I know what the what I've heard from, you know, folks that supported Proposition 114, and I've read the literature, but I've also read the literature that doesn't necessarily support them being a keystone predator. So let's talk through that just a little bit about what the expectations are here, and especially given the dynamics that you see in this state that you've described, you know, we have deserts, we have the high plains, we have uh mountains, they're up at 13,000 feet. You got all that to contend with. They're gonna have different ecological effects on different systems.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Um wolves are often, I think, throughout history, these larger-than-life animals. I mean, whether we're talking about thinking about Little Red Riding Hood or the fact that, you know, wolves are saving rivers or changing rivers or something, they're often seen as these just incredibly larger-than-life species, really. So thinking about what we call a trophic cascade, thinking about wolves being these keystone predators that when they're in or on a landscape, they're going to change everything and that affect cascades throughout the entire ecosystem. There's been so much interesting research out of Yellowstone, out of Banff National Park, out of other places that is building upon the question of are wolves causing these trophy cascades? Um, huge debates. But when I look at that research, and when I look at the landscape in Yellowstone, I started there in 2009, just finished my PhD up. So saw a lot of change go on through throughout that ecosystem. And when I see it, I see a really heterogeneous landscape. And I see areas that are being affected, you know, willow riparian areas being affected by something. And some of these areas are recovering, and then they might be grazed down the next year. Yellowstone in particular is an incredibly complicated ecosystem. So teasing out what is an effect of wolves, what's an effect of a different, you know, elk population, bison population, changing climate.
SPEAKER_02:Climate impacts, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:You know, Yellowstone just had a major flood two or three years ago that completely changed several of those rivers. So, you know, when we're looking at that, we can see changes. It's tough to assign all of those changes to wolves, really. So when I am looking at the landscape in Colorado, you know, we're outside of a national park. We, you know, we have national parks in the in the state, but we're looking at a statewide level. You know, I'm looking at it and I'm looking at all of the other things that are affecting the landscape of Colorado. And, you know, like we've talked about before, there are so many different areas. But if we concentrate on where the debate is around riparian areas, I'm looking in Colorado and I'm seeing climate change effects, places being developed, human impacts on those areas, huge demands for water just to have humans exist. And I have a really hard time thinking about wolves completely changing rivers in Colorado. So that's not to say that wolves don't have an effect on their ecosystems. They absolutely do. I think what what we're looking at in Colorado for, you know, whether we see a trophic cascade or not, I think that's going to be really hard to tease out with all the other things that are going on here.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, agree with that too. I mean, we're outside of national parks. I think when you take that piece away, and the other piece of it is time and numbers, right? I mean, we're two or three years into wolf restoration with 20, 30 animals on the ground. Decades or maybe even. Yeah, it's a long, long, long time away from that. And the story about wolves changing rivers is a very romantic one and a very simplified one. And I think actually people do a disservice to the idea of wolf restoration by trying to give wolves that much credit. I think that there's a lot of reasons to restore wolves other than restoring ecosystems. Wolves are a native species to the state. As a State Wildlife Agency, that's one of our primary goals and primary pieces of our mission is to restore wildlife, not to not to portray a story that may or may not actually be true. So I think that that's a really important piece.
SPEAKER_02:I agree. I, you know, I went to Yellowstone for the first time. Well, it's 1975, but I don't remember a damn thing other than a bear crawling in the back of my grandpa's truck trying to get our cooler. Um I remember a lot more than that, but but I don't I don't remember anything about elk numbers and that kind of thing. I darn sure noticed it when I went in '83 when I was an emerging wildlife uh student at Montana State. And I can assure you the elk were way overpopulated on the winter ranges for sure, all around Yellowstone. So that was just an obvious observation. You didn't you didn't have to be a rocket scientist or have scientists or have a whole lot of data to come to that realization, just look at the ground and range. And obviously, not only reducing the numbers, but redistributing the animals across the landscape, you're gonna see those vegetative impacts. But wolves are just one of many agents of change, is kind of what I heard. Right. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And even in those the northern range of Yellowstone, it's not just wolves that have changed those exangular populations, right? There are lots of other things that are happening here.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. Major mountain lion recovery, grizzly bear recovery, and you know, at the same time as wolf restoration in that area, we had differences in hunting pressure right outside the park on that northern range elk herd, major drought. I think sometimes people forget the 88 fires than like that whole story and in the elk story in Yellowstone. So I view wolf restoration kind of like Eric said, like there's so many different reasons to restore a species, not just wolves, that there's the scientific side, this very technical side of what do wolves do in an ecosystem? There's also a very philosophical side of what is the value of rewilding? What is the value of a species being on the landscape in that intrinsic value?
SPEAKER_01:So you both have probably an ex experiences with wolves that most of us will never get to have. So could you tell us a little bit about what it's actually like working with wolves out in the field, you know, capturing them, putting collars on them? Tell us tell us some stories about that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, I guess I'll start with the first time I came into contact with wolves, you know, as what Brennan alluded to early on, as the whole petition gathering is happening, we're having wolves naturally migrate into the state. And so we had a black wolf that came in. We got a photo of it turned into us by the public, and then we following her, she had a collar on, talked with our colleagues in Wyoming, got the information there, and then started as we're monitoring her, noticed her with another animal, a gray animal. So it was in January, February 21, 2021, that we captured that animal and put a collar on them. And that was the first time that the state agency, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, had collared a wolf. And so leaving the helicopter, coming up to that animal and just seeing it for the first time after it had been sedated was a pretty amazing kind of a thing. And so it's the first time you're hands-on with an animal, you're maneuvering it, measuring it, putting a collar on it, making sure that health is good and it turned out to be a male, those two ended up breeding and had the first litter of pups that we had ever had. And so that you know, as a first experience into wolves, that was a pretty remarkable kind of a thing to experience. And of course, we've had lots of other opportunities to be hands-on. A lot of wolf management is not hands-on, it's a lot of it is monitoring from afar. But because we're in the midst of this really active restoration piece, there is a lot of of wolf handling. But that first experience was was something I'll never forget.
SPEAKER_00:My first wolf job was I was a technician for a master's student, Dr. Matt Metz, in Yellowstone. I was 19 years old. I was a wildlife ecology major with University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. And I thought, what a wild opportunity. Like, I'm probably never gonna work with wolves again. So I might as well like really enjoy and learn everything I can this summer. And, you know, one of my one of my first days for that job was we were generally searching GPS clusters. So we weren't seeing wolves a whole lot, but we helped monitor a couple dens and tried to get pup counts. So we went out super early one morning and we got to watch this den from mile and a half, two miles away. And like that's kind of that's my favorite stuff. You know, scopes have improved in the last 16 years, but just watching wolves do wolf things, they don't have no idea we're there a couple miles away watching. So to be able to see that and then be able to be part of this capture and translocation effort, you have a huge responsibility to make sure that wolf is well cared for and to make sure that you give it the best care possible. So having a wolf in hand is it's you know, it's pretty heavy, like a heavy feeling to make sure that that wolf is able to go out after you release it in this brand new home to be able to go do wolf things again. So it's really nice to be able to see the wolves that we captured and translocated out there, just doing what they naturally do. Um, did a flight the other day, saw a couple of the wolves that we translocated this last year traveling around. One male was bringing food back to a rendezvous site, big, big belly, big belly full of food. And it was really nice to just see him, you know, doing wolf things after we had handled him so recently.
SPEAKER_01:You say that you were there that summer and you were never gonna deal with wolves again. What happened? What hooked you was going there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 16 years later. Um yeah, I mean, I I had that job and I was like, this was absolutely incredible. I ended up going back that next summer and worked for the Yellowstone Bird Program. Then things somehow worked out. Um, graduated from with my bachelor's, moved out, worked with Raptors in Yellowstone, worked with mountain lions in Yellowstone, and then um kind of got in this cycle of working with the bird program in the summer and the wolf program in the winter. So the busy season for both taxa. Worked with really incredible people, got, you know, really incredible experience doing that. Um yeah, I guess I got bit by the bug a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:I think when you lock yourself into an idea that I want to be this, you're gonna get thrown a gyro ball or something. You know, it's just like, and you go where the opportunity lands. You just do in our profession.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and that's kind of one of my takeaways because I don't have a history of having a whole lot of wolf experience. I've been involved with some wolf issues throughout my career here at CPW, but I get asked that a lot, like people that are aspiring students that want to become a wildlife biologist, that want to become fundamentally a wolf biologist. And I said, Well, my path was not that way at all. I started out as an undergraduate. My undergraduate thesis was on pollination ecology, watching bumblebees and flowers and that kind of stuff. And so I think that to me, that was kind of one of my big takeaways is don't say no. Say yes to everything. And any opportunity that comes your way can turn out to be a very interesting path.
SPEAKER_02:Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's extraordinarily sage advice because you know you think about it being a generalist versus a specialist, and you know, the wolf is an ultimate generalist, isn't it? Trevor Burrus, it is. I mean, they can live anywhere on about anything. And so I think all biologists that enter into this profession, if they think they're good-and some do follow that linear path for sure, entire career. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, and the body of knowledge that that's able to develop and is great. I mean, we need people that that are these specialists that do that, but it's not necessarily but you don't have to start as your technician job and you know follow that all the way through being a specialist.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't take kind of like a normal route that a wildlife technician takes of being in one place for six months or a year and then going to another species in another location and and doing something else. I really was lucky enough to be immersed in Yellowstone National Park was just still wild to me. But being able to see that even one location through several different species' eyes. And that's a really unique. Very unique, you know, being able to see that landscape through through the eyes of mountain lions and then golden eagles and look, actually, they use this landscape very similarly. Yeah. And to look, you know, through the eyes of common loons and and wolves was very, very interesting. Um, so I yeah, definitely felt lucky to be able to do that. And yeah, wolves being the ultimate generalist, they're also incredibly resilient. So yeah, trying to have have a little bit of a generalist background while diving into wolf ecology and you know, graduate school being wolf ecology, but also having that resiliency to to you know stick with it or you know, do something else else if that's needed.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Let's dig in a little deeper on the some of the kind of ecological interactions here in Colorado. I realize it's early in the game, um, but wolves got to eat uh a lot. And so they're already interacting with our ungulate populations. We'll get into interactions with livestock and such later. But um how are how are you what are you seeing early on here with their interactions with our ungulate populations? But also is anyone kind of looking at some of the effects on the rest other predators in the state? How's that playing out?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, yeah, starting with the other carnivores in Colorado, when I think of some of the major ones, I think of, you know, black bears, mountain lions, coyotes. So we have actually already seen one wolf killed by a mountain lion. It was our first one last April. And to me, that's very interesting because I had never seen that before. And, you know, a lot of my graduate work was on wolf-cause specific mortality. So having never seen it, it was very interesting because the dynamics in Colorado right now are such that, you know, we have some formed packs now, we have some dens now. But at that point, we had a lot of individual wolves wandering around looking at the landscape. They just got here. So when I saw that, you know, and we reached out to some of our counterparts in other states to ask, hey, have you guys seen this? You know, Washington was an example. They had seen it several times.
SPEAKER_02:Uh lions killed wolves. Exactly. Definitely competitors.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And it really comes down to I think these wolves not being in groups, because one-on-one, I think a mountain lion's gonna win every time.
SPEAKER_02:But when we get to I would have predicted that too, right? Not being a predator ecologist, but that would have been my prediction. It makes complete sense. It does.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but then when we get into you know groups of wolves that are three, four, five plus, then the equation changes. So when I'm out here looking at, okay, we have a lot of single wolves wandering around. There's a lot of mountain lions in Colorado. And they're vulnerable to that, that type of you know, interspecific predation, really. So that has been fascinating to look at. We don't have many examples of black bears interacting with wolves at this point. You know, we get black bears on on cameras that we've set out for for wolves, and anecdotally, I've I've talked to some people who have, you know, a wolf presence in their area, and they're noticing, oh, here we have what seems like less coyotes in this area. And that's what we've seen play out in other areas. You know, wolves and coyotes are competitors, and and wolves are often gonna win that fight. So, but then, you know, one step further, do we see more foxes in that area? Because foxes and coyotes are.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. So we have a couple of those interactions that, you know, some anecdotal, some we've seen direct mortality from for wolves. So yeah, we would like to see some more packs of wolves for multiple reasons, but one of them is to kind of navigate this landscape that has a lot of mountain lines on it.
SPEAKER_02:So what about our ungulate populations, Eric?
SPEAKER_03:What do you see in there? So I mean, like I said, we're we're way early in into this, and we don't have the numbers or the time uh in here to see any kind of effect. They're certainly predating on ungulates. We've got all these individual animals roaming around and not a pack defending a territory and really kind of establishing themselves in a particular. That's when we'll really start seeing it. And that's when we may start to see things that are, you know, much more clear in terms of some impacts, but or th those results may not be quite as clear, too, because of all the different effects on the landscape. And so yeah, there's certainly you know, wolves are carnivores that we certainly expect them to eat meat. That's what wolves do. But it's early to say how it's going to affect our ungulate populations in the state. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's interesting. We were watching a drainage that a den was in just a couple weeks ago. And I've seen this over and over. You know, there were cow elk in that drainage. This was right before calving. So they all still looked pregnant to me. Um, but the den was not even a mile away. Those wolves have been there for six weeks, and yet there's still elk using that drainage just as they would before. So it's yeah, the the effects uh of wolves on ungulates, particularly elk, I look at as like the numeric effect of how many elk are wolves killing, and that behavioral effect. Are they moving to different areas? Are they avoiding riparian areas? And you know, we've seen research out of Utah State and Yellowstone that is that showed elk might change their patterns of going into those riskier areas, those willow areas for a couple hours a day. But in general, they're not completely avoiding those areas, which kind of ties back to our trophic cascades question and and gets back in there. So it is it is fascinating to me, you know, having watched wolf dens over the years and watched elk use those areas, even though they're they know wolves are there. Like I've seen them pick up their head and and look at a wolf walking across, you know, a sage hillside. Like you know that there's a den there, but some for some reason you're okay with it. So they have some sort of communication we just can't possibly understand.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I talked to the hunting community a good bit. And of course, there's obvious concern about competition for sure, you know, big bull elk and deer and that kind of thing. But an interesting angle on this, I was talking with an outfitter last year, and her concern was the fact that if the elk redistribute because of a pack of wolves, I'm out of business. Outfitters get a permit for a very specific location in the landscape here in well, anywhere probably in all states. But here in Colorado, that's how it works, right? You get a permit for an area, and if a pack happens to have that behavioral influence on a herd, uh the elk redistribute to private land, for example, where they may feel safer. Um it's just an interesting angle. It's not just the killing of the numbers of elk, but it can be the redistribution that or there's a concern to the hunting community.
SPEAKER_03:Trevor Burrus, Jr. It may push them out of areas, it may push them into areas. It could push them in. It could be opportunistic and be beneficial too. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:So a lot of speculation with not a lot of not a lot of things manifesting just yet.
SPEAKER_03:We've got and and that's part of it too, is that we've got a really good program to monitor wolves and to see what's going to happen. So we've got, you know, very intentional efforts to keep collars on animals, to keep collars on packs at least, and to kind of monitor that through time and see where wolves are gonna ultimately settle. And and we'll you know, we'll we'll have a much more detailed story to tell in 10 years, 15 years, but yeah, for the time being, we're doing the best to keep track of all the animals that we've put on the landscape.
unknown:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:So wolves have kind of become the symbol of tension between more urban areas and more rural areas. As wildlife biologists, how are you navigating that conflict? How are you having these conversations with these two people and try to help them see a little more eye to eye?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it that's I mean, that's the key piece of wolf management. Is it really all wildlife management is people management? And that's not something that we're necessarily all that well trained or equipped to do. A lot of that is learning on the job, learning how to interface with the rancher or the wolf advocate or whomever. And you're right, too. I mean, when the initiative was on the ballot and it passed, the the vast majority of Colorado's population is on the urban front range from Fort Collins down to Colorado Springs. And that's that's really where a lot of that vote was carried, right? That's where the vast majority of the population is. And part of the ballot initiative said that wolves would be reintroduced west of the continental divide. So those that are on the west slope, which is largely our more rural, more agricultural producing communities, particularly in the ranching side of things, definitely feel a rural-urban divide. And I can empathize with that. I can understand why they have that sentiment. And so it's it's a very, very challenging situation to deal with. And by and large, not to say that all of West Western Slope of Colorado was opposed to wolf reintroduction. The counties generally voted against it, but there are pockets of support. And there's no county that voted 100% against wolf reintroduction. And so there are always these issues. You don't really know who you're going to talk to and what people's perceptions are on wolves when you go to talk to them. And so making generalizations that all ranchers hate wolves is not a fair assessment. That's not the fact. We've met many ranchers that are actually in favor of outfitters as well. People like the idea of hunting in an environment that has the full suite or or at least a more more full suite of the predators that were historically here in Colorado. So it's a really challenging thing. One of the things that's different about this than than other reintroduction efforts is that this was not, as I said earlier, not a CPW-led effort. And so when we go to those communities and we say, you know, we we understand you're you may not be in as fully in support or fully in favor of wolf restoration. This is state law. As state employees, this is what we're doing. We're implementing state law, which is what the ballot initiative came. And so that that doesn't necessarily buy a whole lot of sympathy. People still don't like wolves. That those that don't like wolves still don't like wolves. But maybe that helps us in in some ways and in some of those conversations. But really, those conversations are all about listening and trying to understand. We're not going to convince people that really are opposed to wolves that they should be in favor of wolves. That's not our intent at all. It's to understand what their concerns are, see what the resources are that we can have and how we can try to make things as positive as possible for both the wolves and for the citizens of the state.
SPEAKER_02:Let's talk a little bit about the non-lethal methods that are being used now to help, you know, with ranchers and to keep wolves away from their livestock. If they're working, are you guys doing any work on that? Or I know so there's some work at Colorado State University. Yeah. You know, how do we see this playing out?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, so we know wherever what we said all along, wherever wolves and livestock share the landscape, there's going to be conflict, right? We're going to have wolves who are a carnivore, a depredator, a predator. There's going to be depredation issues with wolves and livestock. And part of the ballot initiative said that we had to develop programs to try to resolve that or minimize those kinds of things. We're never going to prevent it. And so, you know, a lot of ways that we try to do that is by implementing these non-lethal tools. And there's a whole bunch of different kinds of things that are pretty new in some ways and some that are well tested in other states as well. Things like fladry, which is a fence that line that has these red flags on it and sometimes electrified. It works for a period of time. It's not a long-term kind of a solution to the issue. It gets deployed at the right times of the year in small landscapes on calving pastures, lambing pastures, things like that, where it's a small contained area, and that will generally keep wolves out of the area. We use cameras to kind of monitor what wolf behavior is as they come into contact with those that flattery. Noisemakers, sounds, lights, all of these different kinds of things, but you're using novel tools to try to scare them out of that system. Also, human presence is a really big deal. And so we've worked with Colorado Department of Ag, CDA, to implement a range riding program. And so we've got range riders that are out spending a lot of time with the livestock. They're not necessarily wolf biologists, they're not wolf biologists, but they're more attuned to the livestock and looking at livestock behavior, looking at livestock health and seeing if there are ways to try to change some of those behaviors and try to keep conflict minimized to the greatest extent possible. And so all of these things cumulatively add up. And if we can find ways to use the right tool in the right circumstance, hopefully that helps to address a lot of those concerns that we have.
SPEAKER_02:But is there a behavioral difference? And I realize Colorado is very different. It's remote, but it's also far more urban than those three states and where those wolves are. So how have those dynamics kind of played out or have they?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's interesting because we think about hunting and you know, trapping where trapping is allowed in some of these states, as, you know, this is a major cause of wolf mortality. So not as much of the behavior yet as you're talking about. But when I think about wolf mortality, you know, and think about hunting, there are a lot of wolves that are harvested. But then if we look at when wolves were not hunted, say in the tri-state area of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, uh, before they were delisted, so pre-2009, still the vast majority of wolf mortality was caused by humans. So this is and I'm talking about control actions for livestock depredations, you know, some poaching. But you know, up there for from I think the late 80s until 2004 or so, they showed that natural mortality was only about 12% of mortality.
SPEAKER_02:And I bet that was dominated by wolves themselves.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Right. Yeah. So, you know, when you look somewhere that is highly protected, like a Yellowstone or something, you do see that number go down, um, whether they're, you know, protected or not at that time. But when I think about mortality, you know, at first I'm like, oh, hunting would, you know, cause a lot of mortality. But then you look actually like, even when there's no hunting season, humans cause a lot of mortality. You know, we have major roads. We do have, you know, lethal removal either by the agency or, you know, a caught in the act type of type of lethal removal for wolves in Colorado, like that is legal. So when we're thinking about the mortality part, you know, we do actually see a lot of human-cause mortality in places where there's no hunting even. So um, thinking more about the behavioral side, wolves are generally pretty cryptic. I feel like, you know, there's there's an attitude where people think maybe they're not, because there are a couple places, you know, in the US where wolves are pretty visible. But, you know, all of those boundaries are kind of meaningless to wolves. They are using, you know, national parks, they're using states, you know, they're using this state and this state. So a lot of those jurisdictions do change and they keep existing no matter what jurisdiction they're in, whether they're subject to harvest or not. So we'll see what happens. I don't know if we'll see, you know, major behavioral changes because the wolves in Colorado are, you know, still subject to hazing when they're around livestock. So they're learning that, you know, this is not a place that they should be. They can still be lethally removed if they're chasing cattle or something like that. So they are still subject to some negative experiences with humans. So um, and when they're subject to a negative experience like hazing, that's a learning opportunity. Whereas if they were harvested, there's no more learning. Yeah, if the learning stops. So we'll see. I'm super interested, you know, coming from a different type of experience being, you know, more readily available to observe wolves in Yellowstone, usually. Um yeah, it'll be interesting the way that wolves exist in Colorado.
SPEAKER_01:What's one piece of advice that you would give maybe students about to enter the field or someone navigating this conflict around conservation for the first time?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's a great question. I I think the first thing is to listen. I think, you know, try to listen to understand and try to understand what people where where people's perspectives are, why they have the opinions that they do. Don't try to convince them otherwise. And just to listen to understand and to try to see what kinds of solutions you can formulate together and not to come into a situation thinking that you have the answers to all of those challenges, because there's a lot of challenges in every situation is different. Every producer's operation is different, everybody has different pressures, different kinds of concerns that they have to address and balance. And so the social side of conflict management, whether it's wolves or bears or mountain lions or or elk or ravens or whatever, they're it's all challenging and there everybody has a different perspective. And so understanding what those are and taking the time to listen and ask good questions is is really key, a key skill.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely. Yeah, I absolutely echo all of that. Listening is going to be your best friend. Um, I often dive a little bit too deep into nuance and I want to know the facts and everything. And honestly, sometimes it doesn't matter. Um, listening to what what people want and what they're feeling and what their experience is, you know, whether it's with wolves or whatever, is probably gonna be vastly different than my experience and trying to understand each other is gonna be the most important thing. Um, and also I I would say that I have found the relationships that I built, even, you know, in undergrad or right after mid-20s, early 20s have persisted and you know, until now and have been really wonderful to be able to have those relationships with people, whether it's, you know, other biologists or producers out there, being able to call someone and say, Hey, I have a question about range riders. I don't know who to ask. You have range riders on your land. Can I ask you some naive questions? Has been really helpful. So, you know, relationships are are kind of what drives just humans as a species. But as far as career goes and as far as this major conflict, your relationships are going to be your best friend.
SPEAKER_02:I really think this is a critical point for all of our listeners on this, but especially merging uh professionals, students, to really pay attention to what these folks are saying, because uh we often don't know what we don't know. And you don't know what the landowner is is thinking and feeling about their losses or the amount of time they have to put into something. And what you're suggesting to me is you're integrating them into this into the solution. You're asking questions trying to help understand what they're going through to help develop a solution. And I think that listening piece to understand is critically important. And I'm just gonna kind of wrap it up with one last question, um, just for a broader public. If either of you are in the airport and start talking about what you're doing and you're talking to somebody from Orlando or Los Angeles, why why should they care about wolf reintroduction in in Colorado?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. And you know, it it's fun you talk to friends and family that are totally not in the wildlife profession or not in the natural resource profession. And and there's a lot of questions. Why, why do this? Why put yourself through this? Why put the state through this? And I think that it kind of comes back to uh this is what the agency does. We manage wildlife. This is part of restoring the system. This is addressing issues that humans had an impact on wolf populations and all kinds of predator populations 100 years ago, 80 years ago. And so now we're working to address a lot of those kinds of things. And it's it's the right thing to do in from the restoration perspective.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I'll kind of go back to something I said earlier. You know, wildlife restoration, rewilding in general is both a scientific and a philosophical question. When we get down to, you know, specifically wolves, wolves have such an incredible amount of lore behind them. We have had such a history with this species in particular that I think it's very normal to be fascinated by them. It's very normal to have, you know, some big emotions tied to them, whether that's positive or negative, or what I seem to find more often is a mix of both, really. So, you know, I can't tell someone why they should care, but I think if we look a little deeper into our human history, we can see this fascination. And this is kind of just another step in the history of wolves and humans.
SPEAKER_02:I always try to come back to I enter into those situations where you get that question that most biologists aren't quite ready to answer. It's like, well, why should I care about your greater sagegrouse work or working with salamanders? I always try to come back to healthy ecosystems. If we have the entire complement of large predators, all the ungulate species, all of the various other species, we've done, we've done the environment a good thing. And that is going to manifest in clean air, clean water, wild landscapes, uh places that people can recreate. So try to tie it back into something that they can care about, and wolves are just another part of that, of a healthy, healthy ecosystem.
SPEAKER_03:And I think a really important part of wolf restoration is coming back to that conflict and having making sure that we, you know, we want to maintain wolf populations on the landscape in the state, but we also want to maintain ranching. That's that's part of the heritage of the state as well. And so we have to work to find those solutions to find out the ways that ranchers can continue to do the good work that they do and support wolf populations and elk populations and all of those other things too. And so it's not just about restoring wolves, but it's about restoring wolves in the context of all of Colorado, western and eastern and front range and urban and rural all together.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And those private lands, those ranches are providing incredible wildlife habitat to not only wolves, but all of their species. So we just like we value them to such an incredible degree for the services and for the stewardship that those private lands are providing. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:I know there's, you know, some people view it as a complete conflict or an adversarial, but I view this as an enormous conservation success that has its conflicts to make it a success. But I think this is a huge success and really appreciate you guys joining us and telling us the story. We may have to come back uh 10 years and see how things manifested that we talked about. But uh we've been talking with Brennan Cassidy and Eric Odell with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Yeah, thanks to both of you. Thank you both.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for joining us on the Our Wildlife podcast. If you're ready to dive deeper into wildlife science, explore new career paths, or grow your personal network, visit us at wildlife.org. Follow at the Wildlife Society on social media, and subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss out on a new episode. We'll catch you next week with more stories from the wild.